Whoever Fears the Sea, Justin Fox [i love reading .TXT] 📗

all their luggage, the vehicle was chock-a-block. The gap-toothed driver with wraparound sunglasses stood on the pavement chanting ‘Malindi, Malindi, Malindi,’ as though auctioning the town, and manhandled ever more passengers through the door.

By the time they left, there were nineteen people on board. Paul wondered whether the $500 boat ride wouldn’t, in fact, have been a bargain. There were survival-of-the fittest seating arrangements. Paul had a portly man half-sitting on his lap and a mound of luggage at his feet. He hoped the driver’s supplication to Allah, inscribed on the windscreen, would see them safely to their destination.

Just beyond Mtwapa Creek, they came to a roadblock where a traffic cop directed them into a lay-by. Surely their driver would be fined for smooth tyres, overloading, a lack of seat belts? But money seamlessly changed hands and the policeman smiled, waving them on. Fine us, damn it, we’re a tin coffin! he wanted to shout.

The Kikuyu man beside Paul ran his arm along the backrest and let his hand brush the shoulder of a buibui-clad woman. She shot him a lethal glance and he quickly withdrew his arm. The windows were kept shut and the air grew close. Passengers were squeezed together, sweating and jostling for buttock-cheek advantage on the seats. When Paul leant forward, his travelling companion’s flesh spread out behind him. When he sat back, the man hunched forward, ballooning across his vision.

The landscape flashed by. Paul glimpsed baobab and mango trees, sisal plantations and patches of forest, but paid little heed and derived no enjoyment from the scenery. The driving conditions were too uncomfortable. A woman in black sat on the seat in front of Paul and her cute baby daughter stared at him over her shoulder, transfixed. Paul didn’t particularly like babies — or dogs, and he was allergic to cats. Amazingly, all three species knew this and homed in on him, especially at social gatherings. Babies wanted him to play with them, cats made a home in his lap and dogs wasted little time with crotch-sniffing foreplay before getting down to trouser copulation.

However, he had to admit this baby with cherubic cheeks and pigtails was a charmer. He winked and she blinked; he stuck out his tongue and she stuck out hers; he grinned stupidly and she almost reciprocated. This was splendid entertainment. He found himself imagining, in an abstract sort of way, having a child, one day … until he pulled a face that was clearly not to the baby’s liking. Her face crumpled in dismay, then the crying started, then the screaming, followed by vomiting and attendant smell. Paul had seldom craved a destination so wholeheartedly.

Finally Malindi hove into view and the occupants disembarked at a taxi rank. Paul asked the driver to drop him at the waterfront, but the man wanted another hundred shillings, thereby doubling the fare from Mombasa. The two got into an argument, which Paul lost. He was carrying three bags and didn’t know how long the walk might be. ‘I’m not an American with dollars,’ he grumbled. ‘Fleecing visitors is no way to encourage tourism.’

The driver shrugged. Paul relented and paid the money. It was only five hundred metres to the waterfront. He got out in a huff, slamming the door.

Malindi was a scruffy place, a far cry from the prosperous Portuguese town of the sixteenth century he’d read about. Loaded like a pack mule, he stomped along the waterfront in a foul temper.

He’d been given the name of a café beside the main jetty and told to ask for Yusuf Abdulrazak. Paul went from door to door until he found the place. Yusuf was sitting in a plastic chair on the café’s veranda. He was a big man with a white kikoi and blue kofia skullcap and the prematurely lined face of a smoker. ‘Salaam alaikum,’ he said gruffly and held out a hand.

‘Alaikum salaam,’ Paul returned the greeting.

‘They tell me on telephone you want to go to Lamu. They say you want to go in dhow.’

‘Yes, Mr Yusuf, I’d like to get there the traditional way. Maybe even sail further, to Somalia, if possible.’

‘You are too late. The man you need is gone to Mombasa. He left by taxi in morning. You come again at five.’

Yusuf directed Paul to a nearby backpackers’ hostel. Walking through town, he was approached by earnest young men wishing to be his guide. ‘Jambo, habari, where you from?’ The refrain echoed up the street. He returned the greetings but kept walking. Many establishments along the main drag had signs in Italian and German, but there was little evidence of tourist activity. In the month since 9/11, Muslim destinations had slipped off the map and most Westerners had changed their vacation plans.

Ozi’s was a spartan establishment set around a courtyard opposite the town’s main mosque. Paul’s room was on the top floor. The bed was a bare mattress, but sheets and a pillow could be rustled up for the guest who arrived with no sleeping bag. Paul threw open the windows to allow in a sea breeze. From the terrace he surveyed the mosque and beach beyond, as pigeons fluttered between the minarets, cooing lustily.

Once he’d unpacked, Paul decided to go for a swim. Bathing towel over his shoulder, he followed an overgrown lane which narrowed to a path and led on to a headland where Vasco da Gama’s pillar dominated the anchorage. Paul clambered over a coral outcrop and down on to a sweeping stretch of beach. There was only one other sunbather. He laid his towel on the sand nearby and went for a swim, then stretched out on the towel taking notes, whiling away the afternoon waiting for his appointment at Mr Yusuf’s café.

‘Do you have the time?’ Her voice was soft and melodic. She stood over him, silhouetted against the sun.

‘I’m sorry?’ he said, flustered by her sudden appearance.

‘The